English

Pulse and hold strategy for switching current measurements

Superconductivity 2013-05-29 v2

Abstract

We investigate by theory and experiment, the Josephson junction switching current detector in an environment with frequency dependent damping. Analysis of the circuit's phase space show that a favorable topology for switching can be obtained with overdamped dynamics at high frequencies. A pulse-and-hold method is described, where a fast switch pulse brings the circuit close to an unstable point in the phase space when biased at the hold level. Experiments are performed on Cooper pair transistors and Quantronium circuits, which are overdamped at high frequencies with an on-chip RC shunt. For 20 us switch pulses the switching process is well described by thermal equilibrium escape, based on a generalization of Kramers formula to the case of frequency dependent damping. A capacitor bias method is used to create very rapid, 25 ns switch pulses, where it is observed that the switching process is not governed by thermal equilibrium noise.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0610704,
  title  = {Pulse and hold strategy for switching current measurements},
  author = {Jochen Walter and Erik Tholen and Joachim Sjostrand and David B. Haviland},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0610704},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

11 pages, 8 figures, added references in chapter I, changed text in chapter II, III, V and VII

R2 v1 2026-07-22T11:38:54.821Z